


this is a reference to my username

by betaouma



Series: i'm gonna get my biology degree revoked for this [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Ouma talks to people and also there's omegaverse, and also exposition on what i think the drv3 kids are ha, i think that one counts because of how i portray betas, this is exposition on betas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-16 21:24:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16502960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betaouma/pseuds/betaouma
Summary: Ouma Kokichi is a beta. That means he has to be—ugh—responsible.





	this is a reference to my username

**Author's Note:**

> oh dr fandom. the mix of the way characters are either commonly referred to by their first or last names really stood out to me (ouma is always ouma, kaede is always kaede, miu can be called either miu or iruma it depends, maki is always maki, saihara is always saihara etc.) but i didn't go back and switch it to all first or all last names. hopefully it doesn't bother you much.
> 
> my end notes are some more explanation on betas in my version of omegaverse. feel free to skip if that's not interesting.

The smell of pheromones filled the air and Ouma wrinkled his nose at it. It did absolutely nothing for him, thanks to his being a beta, but he knew he had to act before alphas started a fight or some omega started getting rutted in the middle of the cafeteria. Even he, the Supreme Leader, who wanted nothing more than to cause as much havoc as he was humanly capable of, had this obligation to society. It was always like that when reproductive cycles were involved.

Alright, he could do this. All he needed to do was _concentrate_ , and—

What could only be called _the absence of scent_ emanated from the short beta. It neutralized all smells as it spread, most importantly the heady alpha scent. “Hey, Iruma-chan,” he said, jerking his head towards the offending alpha, “if you’re gonna talk about knots all the time, do us a favor and go find a way to choke on yours already!”

Iruma took one look at him and laughed out loud. “You’re just jealous I have one! I bet you don’t even have anything down there!” she finished with a smug expression.

“Ooh, I’m _so_ jealous! Every day, I wake up in a deep depression ‘cause I wish smelling someone else turned my brain off and made me start thinking with just my genitalia,” Ouma replied with a roll of his eyes. “Which I have, by the way. You would have learned this if you didn’t space out in class once you heard betas don’t have sex. Which isn’t true, either!”

“Like it isn’t true for _you_!” Iruma retorted. “You can’t get any, so you’re cockblocking everyone else who can!”

Ouma blinked once. Blinked twice. And then he went from rolling his eyes to sobbing loudly. “H-how _mean_ of you! I’m just trying to save you from _herrrr_ —” at this, he shot a wide-eyed glance at Maki, who glared at him from her corner— “and this is how you repay me?” A loud, snotty sniff came from him.

Although the fake tears convinced no one—everyone in the room was familiar with the acts he put on—one thing he _wasn’t_ lying about was how that was a legitimate concern. Alphas were thought of as being on top of the world, not only because they _were_ , but because they were predisposed to be more assertive. That manifested in different ways, though. There was Kaede, who took to being a leader so easily that Ouma had originally found her untrustworthy. There was Iruma, who was open about everything and anything that was sexual. She would brag about having pheromones so strong they made omegas wet...even though that was what _all_ alphas’ pheromones were capable of. There was Rantaro, who was charming but lamented how it made him jump up several places in many omegas’ “alphas who would make a good father” lists. Last and most relevant was Maki, who didn’t care for common alpha things like claiming omegas but hated other alphas threatening her with their scents. Any alpha who pushed her too hard was trying to die, she’d said.

Nobody wanted to test that out. Thanks to betas like Ouma and Kirumi being there (as was the law), nobody had to.

Now that that was over, Ouma snickered at Iruma, who had started apologizing profusely to him once she had looked over at Maki and received a death glare in turn. “Okay, okay, stop that. Aren’t you alphas supposed to be all high and mighty? It’s weird!” he complained.

Sighing, he looked around the room. Nobody had asked her to, but Kirumi had went off to clear the lunch trays from the tables and put them away. That had left her unavailable and put dealing with Iruma in Ouma’s hands. Everyone had their friend groups, of course, but even though society was changing, alphas and omegas didn’t mingle much.

As for a beta like himself? Both alphas and omegas gave Ouma a wide berth, only tolerating his presence when they needed his nullifying pheromones to quench their mating behaviors. He had no real friends because driving his classmates to hate him by pulling mean-spirited pranks on them was infinitely funnier. The only person who could claim to spend _much_ time with him was Gonta, and that was because he wanted to be an alpha gentleman. He’d be cordial to anyone, even nasty betas.

A huge yawn made its way out of Ouma’s mouth. Thinking of how everyone was so caught up in being an alpha or omega bored him to sleep. “When’s lunch over?” he said to nobody in particular. “I’m gonna pass out if I have to stay here any longer!”

“Be patient, Ouma-kun,” someone next to him said.

He looked to the side, at the blonde girl who had suddenly appeared there, and yelped. “Aah! Trying to sneak up on me, are you, Akamatsu-chan! A- _ha_!” Staring right into the eyes of a shade that nearly matched his own, he said in the strongest _I am an alpha commanding you_ voice he could muster, “I see how it is! You’re trying to get the jump on me so nobody will challenge your leadership! Well, I’m here to tell you that...” He made a _face_ , one he had spent his years perfecting. “It’s not gonna be that easy!”

Kaede jumped a little and Ouma gave a loud whoop at that.  _Take that, alphas!_ his thoughts roared. Like hell he wasn’t naturally intimidating because he wasn’t one of them!

“Ouma-kun, I’m really not—” she began.

“Don’t worry about it! I’m just messing with you,” Ouma cut in. “That was all a lie! I’m lying to myself about being a Supreme Leader, you know. Nobody could follow a beta like me. Just wasn’t born with the charisma!” He was grinning, his tone light and playful, but there was just the slightest hint of strain to his words.

“Oh, but...it doesn’t have to be that way,” Kaede said. Ouma was surprised to see a sad expression on her face—the hell did _she_ have to be down about? She reaped the benefits of being an alpha. “Society’s made a lot of progress! Nobody would think you can’t be what you want because you’re a beta.”

“Nishishi! That’s all a lie too!” Ouma laughed, and the little strain his voice disappeared. “I couldn’t care about that crap. I told you, it’s way too boring for me!” He didn’t fit the mold, and he was tired of hearing about it day in and day out. Even someone like Korekiyo, who on first glance seemed too dark and creepy to be an omega, fit neatly into his category upon further scrutiny.

Sometimes, Ouma wondered if only the rare betas like him were _truly_ alive since all the alphas and omegas seemed incapable of ever shaking the biological roles programmed into their genes. And then he’d laugh it off, because that was pretentious, even for him.

“Ouma-kun...” Kaede sighed. “People are way nicer than you think.” Perhaps she was remembering how Ouma had found her suspicious because natural leaders made him wary.

“Yeah, yeah...” Ouma waved her off, muttering something about how it seemed just about the right time to release more pheromones since Kirumi wasn’t back yet. He strode in to the middle of the room and focused again. He hadn’t cared about training himself to produce calming pheromones whenever he wanted. With how he had grown up, that had been the last of his worries—he’d cared about pheromones just enough to be able to calm his fellow members of DICE when he needed to. It wasn’t like he _couldn’t_ do it, but having Kirumi be the class beta was preferable and everyone knew it. The scents in the room once more erased away, Ouma plopped himself down into a chair and promptly fell asleep. He lied all the time, but he hadn’t been lying about _that_.

All too soon, he felt a shake to his shoulder. “My secret society’s gonna get you for that,” he warned whoever it was, eyes shut. “I’ll have your hand cut off for ever daring to touch me! They’ll follow you around until you die and you’ll live the rest of your life in fear, wondering when they’ll strike! So they don’t even have to do anything at all, but the psychological damage will be—”

“Ouma-kun, wake up. Class started ten minutes ago and if you get another absence, you’ll be in trouble.” The voice was just firm enough to cut through the threats Ouma’s half asleep mind was generating and pushing out his mouth.

“Yeah, I’d just _hate_ to get in trouble,” Ouma muttered, opening his eyes to blink lazily up at the person who’d awoken him. “Soooo...what brings you here, Saihara-chan?”

Saihara stuck out like a sore thumb in the classroom. His smell was all too _neutral_ , reminding Ouma of the pheromone equivalent of those air fresheners and fabric softeners that had names like _Fresh Spring_. He didn’t make his primary sex apparent by demeanor, either—he was both just demure enough to not seem like an alpha and assertive enough to not seem like an omega. He could be a beta, but if he was Ouma would be a little annoyed he never lifted a finger to help calm the class. Sometimes, Ouma wanted to find and hide the pills that were making him smell like a biochemical dryer sheet and find out what his real scent was like. It was a puzzle for him, something his mind could work on when he grew bored of doodling possible methods of invading other countries and taking over the world in his school notes.

The list of people Ouma could regard without taking into account if they were an alpha or omega was very short, though, so he was glad for the change.

“Nobody wanted to come get you,” Saihara admitted. He had the decency to not look happy about that fact.

“Oh well! That’s what I can expect from everyone!” Ouma hopped to his feet and stretched. “Would you look at the time, then. It’s time for me to disappoint everyone by showing my face again!” He turned, regarding Saihara again. “When the teacher said I’d be in trouble if I’m absent again, is that an _I’ll be in trouble if I’m absent one more time after this_ ,or an _I’m gonna get in trouble for being gone today the second I step into the classroom_? Cause if it’s the latter, then I’m out of here!”

“I didn’t catch which one,” Saihara replied, shaking his head at him. “You know, people don’t dislike you because you’re not an alpha or omega.”

“They dislike me because I treat them like garbage!” Ouma finished for him. “Come on, tell me something I don’t know.”

“Well, I just thought...you thought you couldn’t get along with everyone because you’re a beta. Now that I say it, it sounds stupid.” Looking away from the beta, Saihara fiddled with his hat.

“Huh.” Ouma’s face was blank, his expression perfectly controlled. “But betas are supposed to be _nice_! We make sure everyone behaves and nobody gets in a fight or gets naughty in the middle of class. Where’d you get that idea from? It’s something only you could come up with.” Indeed, he almost didn’t know what to make of it. It was almost touching, in a way, if sympathy for the Supreme Leader wasn’t a waste of time. “Besides,” he went on, “lying to me to make me feel better doesn’t help when you so obviously don’t believe it yourself. Otherwise, you wouldn’t hide what you are!”

“No! It’s not what you think it is!” Saihara exclaimed. Ouma blinked. He hadn’t thought the detective would react like that. “Ouma-kun, if you were a criminal and you learned the detective investing you was an alpha or omega, what would you do?”

“Nishishi!” Ouma smiled, pleased with how the hypothetical situation suited him. “I’d think they’re a _dumb_ detective, cause they just told me what pheromones I should use against them! And even if they took pills so I couldn’t, just being able to pick out their scent would make it easier for me to evade them Of _cooourse_ , beloved Saihara-chan is smarter than all these dumb detectives. If nobody knows what you are, they can’t predict you.”

“You got it,” the detective said in relief.

“Besides, it’s easy to tell what you are...isn’t that _right_ , Mister Alpha?”

“ _What_?” Saihara spluttered. “Why do you think I’m an _alpha_?”

Confusion spread over Ouma’s features. “Damn, I was wrong? Omega, then? Or maybe you’re a beta who won’t pull his weight!” No answer. “Come _on_ , play along! I guessed everything, so one of those is correct!” Maybe his nose wasn’t as keen as an alpha’s or omega’s, but he couldn’t smell anything from Saihara, even if he’d been surprised. Whatever those pills were, they were strong.

“Ouma-kun, we’re at the classroom,” was all Saihara had to say.

With a dramatic sigh, Ouma opened the door and stomped his way over to his seat. Next to his desk, Tenko was standing and glaring Kaito down, presumably because he’d gotten too close to the omega girls. Nobody asked Ouma to, and he was sure Tenko was an omega who absolutely could handle herself, but he made sure there were more nullifier pheromones in the air.

He pulled his notebook out and slapped it down on his desk. A glance at the board told him all he needed to know about the lesson, and he scribbled the notes down. The margins were full of doodles and world domination plans, things to occupy his mind when school started to bore him out of his skull.

“You need the notes?” Rantaro whispered from his other side.

Ouma turned to face him and lifted the notebook to show him. “Nah, I’m good,” he said with a shrug. “Why’re you asking?”

“I just wanted to be nice,” the alpha replied.

“Huh. How interesting!” Ouma said, slouching forwards across his desk. “Did Akamatsu-chan put you up to this?”

“Why’s that matter?” Rantaro asked.

Ouma narrowed his eyes at him. This whole thing had the alpha girl’s scent all over it. First, her words about how people were nicer than he thought. Then, Saihara attempting to encourage him that he didn’t have to avoid socialization just because he was a beta. Now, Rantaro, in his own words, just wanting to be nice.

“It’s a huge waste of time!” Ouma whispered back. “I’m doing my job, aren’t I?” They may have been trying, sure, but he wouldn’t be able to have fun with the others, anyway. He had the most fun pranking the others. Getting along would require molding himself to fit what the others wanted, and it was beyond pretentious of them to expect him to do that. With another dramatic roll of his purple eyes, he reached down and pulled a dingy paperback out of his bag. He’d almost gotten his Switch taken away when he had brought it to play in class, but when he blatantly ignored his lesson with a _book_ instead, nobody said a word about it.

Bragging about his intelligence was so blasé, but he could read 1984 without needing a Japanese translation. In the dystopian society, the Outer Party was made up of betas like Ouma. They were the ones who had no freedom, were watched constantly, and were deprived of simple human pleasures like good food and sex. The class below them, the alpha and omega proles, were dumb meat, but they had freedom and pleasures, things to keep them nice and happy so they didn’t try and overthrow the Party. Beta children born to them were taken away and placed in Outer Party “families”. The arrangement didn’t lend well to family attachment, which was the point.

It was Ouma’s favorite book, but not because it appealed to his inner angst by using betas living pleasureless, sexless lives as an embellishing detail to make the book’s setting a dystopian hellhole. No, he just thought dystopian hellholes were cool! If he was to be an evil supreme leader, he’d have to rule over a place like Oceania. He liked the novel enough to have read it hundreds of times. He hadn’t gotten bored and tossed it away when he grew tired of it—yet, anyway.

He had just turned the page when a shriek caused his hand to jerk and nearly rip the page out entirely. “Can I _help_ you?” he drawled to Tenko, who had been the one yelling. “Some alpha being a dick again?”

“You’re...sitting quietly and reading!” She gritted her teeth, pointing a finger at him. “A degenerate male like you wouldn’t just do that. You’re plotting something! I heard you whispering to that alpha degenerate earlier!” A gesture at Rantaro followed.

“Hate to break it to you, but I had no time to come up with an evil plot with him. He was being patronizing and belittling my intelligence,” Ouma said flatly.

“Just what an alpha boy does!” Tenko huffed. Really, the only reason she tolerated Ouma’s male degenerateness was the fact that he _did_ help protect omegas from alphas with his pheromones.

“I know. I _really_ wanted to come up with an evil plan with someone,” Ouma said, sticking his tongue out.

“Well...you’re always planning something!” Tenko insisted.

“Nope,” Ouma said. “Fucking losers won’t plot with me! How boring!” It had taken his attention away from reading, though. He turned back to his notebook and busied himself tearing several pages out, crumpling them into balls. There. When he got bored, he could amuse himself throwing them at Kaito’s head. Lord knew he thought it was a conspicuous target.

When he had run out of paper balls and school had ended for the day, Kaito headed right for him and lifted him by the shirt collar. “Ouma, you bastard!” he roared. “You messed with me for the last time!”

Ouma could hardly suppress his giggles. Now came the funniest part of pissing alphas off. He could smell the aggression coming off the angry alpha. Collecting himself again, he released pheromones. They’d act exactly as intended, calming the physiological manifestations of Kaito’s anger. His heart rate would slow down, his breathing would go back to normal, and his body would cool down. He’d find himself unable to stay angry at Ouma.

Sure enough, the purple-haired alpha’s arms trembled. “Damn it!” he spat. “I should really knock some sense into your thick skull, but I don't feel up to it cause of your fucking pheromones! Consider yourself lucky.”

“Oh my.” Noticing the situation, Kirumi came over. “Momota-kun, _please_. I understand being upset at Ouma-kun, but the proper way to deal with harassment is to involve the school authorities.”

Kaito looked at her helplessly. “I can’t do anything. He’s messing with me more by using his stupid pheromones on me!” Letting out a yell of frustration, he shook Ouma. “Ugh! Fight me like a man, you little shit!”

“Hmmm...” Ouma tapped his lip, as if in deep thought. “Nope! This suits me just fine!”

“Asshole,” Kaito said, setting Ouma back down on the ground. “Listen, I really wanna believe you want everyone to get along on some level. But the only time you use your pheromones is to be a piece of shit to everyone!”

“Oh come on, Momota-chan, thats _way_ too harsh of an assessment of me! Of _course_ I use my pheromones to help everyone! I’d hate to come back in and see Shinguuji-chan bent over a desk cause someone didn’t have their pheromones in check,” Ouma said.

Maybe he should have picked another omega to use as the example, because the tall boy gave him a look that made Ouma’s skin crawl.

“Jeez, well sorry, sorry!” the beta exclaimed. “You’re the first omega I thought of!” He turned his attention back to Kaito. “You alphas think you’re so great cause everyone _tells you_ you are, but answer me this. What would have happened if you _had_ whacked some sense into me, huh? Toujou-chan sure was trying to tell you.”

“...I’d get in trouble, yeah,” Kaito answered sullenly. “But sometimes doing what’s right means doing it even though everyone and the rules say it’s wrong! You don’t fucking listen to anything else.”

An exaggerated look of dismay came over Ouma’s face. “You’d really beat up a poor, innocent little beta like me, who only wants everyone to calm down?”

“Innocent!” Kaito exclaimed. He stopped, caught on something Ouma had said before. “You know, we’re damn lucky you’re a beta and you can only calm people down. If you were an alpha or omega...”

“I’d be an empty-headed idiot, like you!” Ouma retorted. He was pondering what kind of mayhem he could get up to if he had alpha or omega pheromones...but then that would be at the cost of being driven crazy by the need to mate. On second thought, he wouldn’t give up being a beta for the world.

“Hey! _I’m not a damn idiot_! You take that back!” Kaito shouted at Ouma, but the shorter boy was already leaving.

Ouma waved his hand in the air without looking back. “Later, loser!”

He was practically skipping on his way out of school. Sure, alpha and omega stuff still bored him to death and he couldn’t even get away from it as a beta. But there was _so much_ he could do as a beta he didn’t care.

Like get away with stealing, for example. He was thirsty, and he thought he’d snag himself some Panta before he returned to his secret base.

**Author's Note:**

> unlike alphas and omegas, there's not much accepted as "official" lore on betas, so i made my own.
> 
> it doesn't make sense to me for betas to be just like normal people (why would alpha/omega reproduction evolve in humans if the mode of reproduction we have irl also exists and is perfectly fine) so i made a different role for them. betas are basically an intermediate between alphas and omegas, having no knots or functional wombs. betas are very rare and being one is a recessive trait. instead of mating pheromones, they express nullifying ones that calm down alpha and omega mating behavior by neutralizing the offending pheromones. their nullifier pheromones are in the same molecular class that heat suppressors and those kinds of medications are, because those are based on beta pheromones. betas had an important role in the development of society because without those nullifer pheromones, society wouldn't be able to develop as well because of how disruptive heats and ruts are.
> 
> betas are sterile 99.99% of the time, so the only way to get them is for one to be born to carriers of the beta gene. there have been very rare cases of betas having functional wombs and having children, but it's hard for them to become pregnant and then go on to carry the pregnancy to term.
> 
> because of that, ouma became a perfect fit for a beta for me because if he thinks most people are one-note and boring normally, what about when most people are alphas or omegas?
> 
> also...it was entirely my choice to bring up novels in omegaverse, and how they'd be different if a/b/o existed in the world, but i laughed so hard thinking of 1984 omegaverse. is george orwell an alpha, beta, or omega? that's way too much. there are some things mankind is not meant to know and that's one of them.


End file.
